I have been using a shell account on a Freebsd server for a couple of years to do some simple things. I decided to install Ubuntu Linux tonight on my home computer in a spare partition. It is up and running (Yea!!!)

My question is...How do I install a program like xmms (medial player)? I downloaded a tar.gz file and extracted it, but when I try to "Install", nothing happens. I tried to open a terminal and follow the directions

./configure
make
make install

but when I do the configure, I get a message telling me...
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH

I thought that to install a unix, a c compiler would get installed by default?

Also, with freebsd, to install a program, I would go to /usr/ports ... and make install etc.... What is the equivalent method for installing on linux if doing it via the shell?

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Thanks in advance... Mike

ubuntu 5.0.x uses apt-get install for packages. Find ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ sid main site for multimedia pkgs not included with ubuntu(debian sid based).
ubuntu also has 'unofficial starter guide' web page discussing other sites-univers,multiverse,etc to add to ur /etc/apt/sources.list. Then apt-get update and apt-get install pkg should work. Good luck.

The unofficial guide is here. It hasn't been updated for 5.10 as I write, but the mechanics of installing & updating haven't changed. Follow the instructions & you should be OK.

Rather than compiling from source it would be easier to install using synaptic. In hoary synaptic is in the menu under system>administration>synaptic package manager. I haven't upgraded to breezy yet, so I don't know if it's a little different, but it's probably similar. By installing this way it detects what's needed for it to install something and satisfies the dependencies first.

If you really want to use the command line, apt-get install xmms is a way to install things, Synaptic is basically a gui for apt-get.

Thanks to all of you. I think I like the synaptic package manager the best for now. I am used to installing ports in FreeBSD by downloading and compiling them, but the file system for Linux is a bit different. The ability to select a program to download and install is nice. Thanks a bunch.

Mike

There is nothing stopping you from downloading source for packages not found in the Synaptic repositories and doing the normal ./configure and make install cycle for you want to. Your original error was caused by the fact that the Development tools were not installed.

Go to the Development section in Synaptic and install gcc, make and binutils and then you will be able to compile from source and install.

Norm